{"id":962,"date":"2012-06-25T05:29:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T10:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fearofwhales\/?p=962"},"modified":"2012-07-01T17:07:17","modified_gmt":"2012-07-01T22:07:17","slug":"gender-identity-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2012\/06\/gender-identity-2.html","title":{"rendered":"The People In Front Of You"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine who is planting<a href=\"http:\/\/thischurchthatguy.com\/\"> THISchurch<\/a> dispensed some advice to me that I\u2019d like to pass along to you.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWork with the people in front of you\u201d he said \u201cNot the people you wish you had in front of you\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What a great word for a person in ministry. (or for any person) It&#8217;s easy for me to get excited about results or programs or possibilities. I want to Build a chapter, I want to plant a church, I want to lead a small group. And the people who are involved eventually become like props inside the visionary&#8217;s mind. The temptation then is to get upset that the props are not correctly filling the holes you have built for them. They are supposed to be more mature, or less mature, or more evangelical, or more Justice oriented.<\/p>\n<p>But the bottom line is that that&#8217;s ridiculous. The people are the <strong>point<\/strong>, they are the reason we have churches and small groups and chapters, and if they don&#8217;t fit our expectations that&#8217;s because our expectations are wrong.<br \/>\nI want InterVarsity K-State to be huge. I want to hire more staff, and have a group for every ethnicity on the campus, and do 101 ongoing service project ideas I have, but that doesn&#8217;t matter, because there will be nothing good about any of that in IV K-State doesn&#8217;t first become a ministry that deeply impacts the lives of the particular individuals that have become involved in the ways they need to be impacted. Not just the ways I need them impacted.<\/p>\n<p>Lord I believe. Help My Unbelief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine who is planting THISchurch dispensed some advice to me that I\u2019d like to pass along to you. \u201cWork with the people in front of you\u201d he said \u201cNot the people you wish you had in front of you\u201d What a great word for a person in ministry. (or for any person)&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The People In Front Of You - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2012\/06\/gender-identity-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The People In Front Of You - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A friend of mine who is planting THISchurch dispensed some advice to me that I\u2019d like to pass along to you. \u201cWork with the people in front of you\u201d he said \u201cNot the people you wish you had in front of you\u201d What a great word for a person in ministry. 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